Job Market Paper

The Clergy and Primary Education: Evidence for Nineteenth Century France

Abstract: 

Religious authorities play an important role in educational provision, yet their effect in improving educational attainment is not well established. This paper studies how the clergy affected primary schooling outcomes in nineteenth century France- an era of significant education reform and expansion. My analysis focuses on department-level enrollment, literacy, sorting into different school categories, and school funding structures from 1855 to 1876. I use new data on the number of clergy between 1826 and 1900, which predicts educational outcomes in the second half century. My empirical strategy conditions on previous schooling outcomes and uses the number of executions per department during the French Revolution as an instrumental variable. Results show that clergy presence positively affected enrollment and literacy rates, sorting into public versus private schools, and sorting into secular rather than religious schools. Areas with stronger clergy presence also experienced a more pronounced shift from household to public funding of public primary education. Clergy members played a direct and indirect role in expanding enrollment but did not suppress secular schooling in this period, which fits into France’s larger secularization story at this time.

Work in Progress

The Long Run Effects of Public Religious Subsidies in Alsace-Lorraine

Abstract: 

Alsace-Lorraine serves as a natural experiment of subsidizing religion through public funding of clergy salaries, public religious education, buildings, and operational grants while the rest of France instituted secularist policies and stopped funding religion when the law of 1905 passed. I exploit variation across the Alsace-Lorraine border using a border regression discontinuity design to study the persistent effects of religious subsidies on outcomes related to religious identity, participation, and beliefs about the education system, government, and religious practices. Preliminary results indicate that outcomes in Alsace-Lorraine show significant differences with the rest of the Grand Est region in only a few areas including the respondent’s mother’s church attendance, prayer frequency, belief in heaven, and confidence in schooling and the education system. I find a greater number of significant differences when comparing Grand Est with the rest of France across religious identity, respondent’s father’s church attendance, belief that religion brings inner peace, and disagreement on churches and religious groups having too much power. These findings suggest that public religious subsidies do not drive large or consistent differences in religious behavior in this setting. The conclusion is in line with literature that does not find positive treatment effects of increased state support of religion.